Saddam: Fear of justice system
2004-07-01 08:09
Baghdad - Relatives and lawyers for Saddam Hussein and 11 top members of his old regime who face an Iraqi judge on Thursday have slim faith in Iraq's judicial system and fear unfair bias against their clients.
"We were surprised to learn that Kamal is included in the dozen," said Abdelhadi Jabbar, the father-in-law of one of the accused, Kamal Mustapha Abdallah, an ex-officer in Saddam's elite armed forces, the Republican Guard.
"We know that he has done nothing serious. He was only an officer who obeyed orders. All the world knows what happened under the rule of Saddam Hussein - anyone who disobeyed instructions was killed," the 65-year-old told AFP.
"Where is the special tribunal?" demanded the father-in-law.
"We do not know what it is, this tribunal, who is the judge or where it is located," he added.
Salem Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, which will oversee the trail of Saddam and his aides, has kept the composition of the body shrouded in secrecy for reasons of personal security for the judges involved.
"At the moment, we know nothing," said a lawyer for the family, Me Badie Arif Ezzat.
"I have never seen Kamal, he does not even know that I am his lawyer," Ezzat declared.
"The tribunal must allow the accused to see their families to find out who will be representing them and following that we can produce our documents," the lawyer told AFP, producing an agreement from his client's wife, Acil Abdelhadi, dated January 21, 2004.
Ezzat also condemned the pressure being exerted on the defence attorneys, especially those representing Saddam.
Threatening lawyers with death
On Tuesday a member of the ex-dictator's legal team, Issam Ghazawi, accused Iraqi Justice Minister Malek Dohan al-Hassan of threatening him and other lawyers with death. The Iraqi minister denied the allegations.
"I did not threaten anyone. I told him: 'If you want to defend Saddam Hussein you must come to Iraq and visit, first, the mass graves,'" of thousands of murdered dissidents uncovered since Saddam's fall, Hassan said.
Such a response did not go down well with Ezzat, who said, "If the justice minister says that, how can the lawyers work freely?"
The head of Saddam's defence team said the Iraqi judicial authorities were illegal and were preventing his lawyers from entering the country.
"We are lawyers and we respect the law. Despite the reservations we have concerning the Iraqi judicial authorities, who are illegal, we wish to go to Iraq to defend," Saddam, he said.
He said efforts to do so had failed so far, and he accused Iraq's Bar Association of "refusing to give us the necessary permits to go to Iraq".
"It is not enough for the Iraqi government to say that they respect the law. If they want justice, they should not be afraid of our visit to Iraq," Rashdan said.
Saddam's defence team was appointed by his wife Sajida and his three daughters, Raghad, Rana and Hala, following his capture by US troops in northern Iraq in December.